The only thing that stops the dust is the rain. It’s a sweet reprieve, but there is no middle ground. The land is either as dry as the Betty Ford clinic, or as wet as the ocean floor. Everything can be seen from the ridge overlooking Armadillo as John Marston gently bounces along atop...

GAMING NEWS

Call of Duty Elite Goes Free For Black Ops 2

All the exclusive videos, data, and community features available at Call of Duty Elite will be available on Call of Duty Regular later this year when Black Ops II lands. Activision revealed today that the DLC map packs will remain behind a transaction, despite the wide frontier in their Elite platform.

Four Call of Duty Black Ops II map packs will be available at $15 a piece. Additionally, a Season Pass for all four packs will be available at retail and digitally for $50. You would think that Call of Duty Elite wasn't making a profit for the company, but in August the service tallied 2.3 million subscribers.

Of course, many of those subscriptions could have been from the Hardened Edition of the game, netting Activision $40 on top of Modern Warfare 3's $60 price tag. That said, I have seen many younger gamers walk their parents in to Gamestop for an Elite subscription.

Activision added that the Elite service will include (or enhance) the following features:

Player HQ – Track Call of Duty: Black Ops II performance with rich game statistics, including enhanced match information such as heat maps and recent match data; track challenges and extensively modify your classes like never before using Treyarch’s new Pick 10 Create-a-Class system.

Clan HQ – Join an existing clan or start your own, invite friends and then take part in Call of Duty: Black Ops II clan competitions with cool digital prizing. Zombies Support – For the millions of Zombies fans out there, now you can track your Zombies personal statistics and compare it to other players’ around the world.

Call of Duty Elite TV – Launching with tablet support with Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the new Call of Duty Elite TV will deliver a renewed community focus featuring developer tips and strategy programming, custom class overviews and more.

Social Sharing and Notifications – With Call of Duty Elite’s new notification system, you can stay updated with what is going on in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, as well as communicate directly with your clan.

Now that the videos, map layouts, tips, and clan functions are open to any and all comers, will you use the Elite service? Have you been using Elite with Modern Warfare 3?